The bird had been reported to Pokraka in that area and he thought he saw it, but was not positive.
A recent positive sighting was that of a male singing on a low bush in a field near Boat Lake just south of the Bruce Peninsula.
The bird was a beautiful adult male with unusually bright colouring and was likely singing in the vicinity of its nest.
Dickcissels are usually hard to find in summer - many have been spotted in winter along with house sparrows at bird feeders.
I once spotted a pair of dickcissels just southeast of Melbourne along the first range road.
The nest was in a very small bush, about one metre high, in an uncultivated field. I was fortunate to get good pictures of both the birds and a nest containing pale blue eggs. It was the first nesting record for Middlesex County.
These birds usually have two nests a year. The nests are built by the female in clumps of tall grass or in bushes, from just under a metre to almost five metres above ground.
The bird has a nickname, little meadowlark, because of the male's yellow breast and black bib.
They are extremely erratic in changing nesting grounds - abundant one summer in one area, then vanishing and arriving next summer in a new nesting place.
I remember seeing a good number of these birds in a few fields close together north of Erieau.
That year we saw quite a few males on the telephone wires and the farmer waited for the young to fledge before cutting his field.
Dickcissels are often host to the brown-headed cowbirds, which of course kill the young.
Migrating south in the late summer - sometimes still singing - they move to Central America.
They winter from central Mexico to northern South America and Trinidad in the West Indies, where in 1962 one observer noted flocks roosting in sugar cane or bamboo.
There were about 70,000 in one roost that year.
They return north in April and May. Then the male immediately announces his territory by repeatedly singing dick, dick, dick-cissel from a convenient perch.
They nest mainly on the prairies and east to southern Ontario and central New York, south to central Colorado, and South Carolina to eastern Maryland - in general away from the Atlantic coastal plain.
Updates The Wenn family of Byron emailed me about a female downy woodpecker. It has been taking seeds from the feeders and drinking from the oriole feeder. As a female, it would have no red on its head and could instead be a young bird taking what it can get from the nearest source.
thomasnhayman@rogers.com
Saab is back in Canada!Pelee viewing expected to peak soon
